The Trial Of The Man Who Said He Was God

by Douglas Harding

  Let me translate this into here-and-now language. Looking in right now at what I’m looking out of - at the Aware Capacity or Solitary Consciousness that I find here - I realize that this is what unites me with your consciousness and all consciousness. There’s nothing to mark it out as the property of John a-Nokes, everything to mark it out as common property. The property of the Court Usher over there by the door, for instance, and the Clerk to the Court, and all the rest of us here. This Aloneness is the remedy - the sole remedy - for loneliness. Here I am you, whoever you are. If this is that dreaded solipsism, it is also the perfect antidote for solipsism. Hurray for the Solitude which at last overcomes solitariness!

  Or put it like this: because the word ‘I’ has two contrary meanings, so has the solipsism which says ‘I alone exist!’ The solipsism of delusion and bitter loneliness is saying ‘I, Jack, alone exist!’ The solipsism of enlightenment and love is saying ‘I, the One Consciousness or First Person in all beings, alone exist.’ I think Counsel is accusing me of the first kind because he has never heard of the second, let alone enjoyed it.

  Now for the regression - a nasty word, made nastier by calling it infantile - which is the other aberration he accuses me of. (How invaluable these pejorative terms can be, as substitutes for honest thinking and observation!) If for regression I substitute return to my roots, and for infantile I substitute as a little child - and if, in addition, I consult once more our diagram - why then what a different picture is conjured up! ‘Until you become like little children you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven.’ Until you revert to the time when you didn’t hallucinate a wad of stuff bunging up the mid-point of your universe, until you revert to the time when you didn’t superimpose on your featureless Original Face that acquired mirror-face, until you revert to the time when you weren’t eccentric to yourself by one angstrom (let alone by one metre) and permanently out to lunch - until then you will be sick. Not, it’s true, a case of infantile regression, but of that dehumanizing and degenerative disease which you could call infantile-regression-phobia: a case of adulthood cutting itself out not only from its own childhood, but from its sole Supplier and Resource.

  In working out and giving vent to all these matters, over the past fifteen years or so, I have - yes - given some offence to pious folk, and much offence to fanatics. About this I have two things to say:

  The first is that I never intended to give offence to anybody. None of my work has been deliberately belligerent. Rather the other way round. In fact, it belongs to the pattern of things as I see them that all faiths, creeds, religious systems and religious practices proceed from the one Centre which is the true First Person that I AM. In the last resort, accordingly, I’m responsible for the lot - not excluding the most bizarre and intolerant and aggressive, and the cruel injustices and violence and civil commotion they lead to. In this sense I’m pleading Guilty to much more than I’m charged with. On the other hand it remains true that to say anything of importance in the field of religion is to infuriate somebody. If it’s worth saying and not just pious waffle (of which there’s plenty, forsooth), it’s bound to spark off accusations of heresy, if not blasphemy. I take it that the Act isn’t, for this reason, intended to silence absolutely all God-talk.

  The second thing I have to say here is much more important. You may well feel, as I do, that this Act is potentially and in the long run more evil than the evil it’s designed to combat. Instead of ensuring that religious individuals and bodies shall be free to teach and to preach according to their lights, without interference by those of contrary persuasion, it ensures that the most vociferous and intolerant and unscrupulous of sectarians shall dictate how far the rest are allowed to teach and to preach, if at all. The Act uses the law to set these fanatics above the law. It goes one worse than saying that overt might is right: it says that the most insidious and despicable might - the might of the pogrom and the Klan and the suitcase bomber - is right. The law it upholds is the law of clout. Clout overt and bloody-brutal as well as clout underhand and dirty-brutal. If this iniquitous Act is allowed to go unrepealed, this is a bad time for our land and our species. The lights are going out all over the planet. Civilization is well on the way to high-tech savagery. The Homo that could have become sapiens has become not so much Homo stultus as Homo diabolus.

  Don’t tell me there’s no alternative to this barbarous Act or something very like it, and that if people can’t propose feasible ways of liberalizing it they had better keep their big mouths shut. I say that the only real alternative to this so-called Anti-Blasphemy Law (which, seeing it puts man at man’s Centre, is in fact pro-blasphemy) is the insight which sends man packing to his proper place. And don’t tell me it’s an unworkable alternative, a vision hidden from all but a handful of gifted seers. No, the most vividly lit scene in the whole world - once you bother to look - is that headed third person over there behind glass, and this headless First Person here in front of it, and the total contrast between them. God’s in, Jack’s out is plainer than daylight, once I rouse myself from my long dream and raise an eyelid.

  Not content with going on and on about the obviousness of this waking scene, my friends and I have devised over the years a whole range of alarm clocks (so to speak), devices for alerting us to the scene and for keeping us alert - devices (I have to say this) which are incomparably more immediate, certain and foolproof than any that have gone before. A few of you here - those who, like His Honour, have actually carried out with me the little experiments I begged you to do - will be able to judge from that small sample the workability of our devices and techniques for waking us to our Divine Nature. The advent of these experiments - plus humanity’s ever more desperate need to discover that Nature and so avoid genocide, plus humanity’s ever more efficient means of communication, plus a generous helping of what you might call luck and what I would certainly call grace - add up to a fairly encouraging total. Who’s to say that Homo hasn’t a fighting chance to make it to sapiens? I take heart from the reflection that this very offbeat species of ours has somehow muddled and staggered and crept through Ice Ages and Ages of Stagnation and Ages of Decline and Dark Ages, and is still going strong. Strongly for Hell, it may be. But need not be. I have a vision which can save my people. I’ve shared it with you. It is the Christing of humanity, no less. Where there’s no vision the people perish.

  A few million years ago proto-man made the ‘impossible’ leap from animal un-self-consciousness to human self-consciousness. Was this his last and only leap? Fiction (the pretence that one is what one looks like) turned animals into men; facts (say a distinguished company of seers, sparsely but very widely scattered throughout the world for the past three millennia) can now turn man into God. Some of them say that this second leap - from human self-consciousness to divine Self-consciousness - is hard, others say that it’s easy. I say that it’s easier than winking. Eckhart says, ‘Put on your jumping shoes and jump into God!’ I say: Look! See how small and effortless a jump it is to put yourself in God’s Adidas trainers on this side of the glass, instead of man’s trainers on that side. This truly Olympic event is no high-jump or long-jump, but a low and short standing-jump, the Instantaneous 180° Twist-jump. Make-sure you carry away the Gold!

  Of course I hasten to add that it’s not at all easy, having jumped, to stay jumped, to stand your ground which is Home Ground. Inevitably you revert. But at least you now know that you can make that leap, and you know exactly how to go about it, and you know that every new leap comes more naturally than the last. And sooner or later you know from experience that, exacting and often difficult though this new life as First Person certainly is, it’s far less punishing than the third-person life. God’s in, Jack’s out isn’t only as plain as daylight. It’s as laid-on and good for working in as broad daylight is. It’s when Jack ousts God that thick darkness descends and he turns himself into a benighted Jackass. Which makes it a very unpractical thing for Jack to do.

  And so I come - as Counsel pr
edicted - to that all-important word in the Act and in his initial summary of it, to that one word which gives this wretched piece of legislation such saving grace as it has. That word is falsely.

  I’m indeed guilty of blasphemy if I falsely claim to be the One whom others revere as the Highest.

  Well, ladies and gentlemen of the Jury, I have proved to you, many, many times over, that my claim is true. Those of you who have discovered in the course of this Trial that it’s true of you also will, by bringing in a verdict of Not Guilty, tell Counsel where he can put his gibe that it is perverted and immoral and shameful.

  Which gives me the cue to what I most want to say, and have therefore left to the very last. The difference between the ‘My Me is God’ (Il mio me è Dio) of St Catherine and the ‘I am God’ of some of her far from saintly contemporaries - seemingly so slight and theoretical - is in fact immense. The feel of the first is all right; of the second, all wrong. It’s revolting. Thus far I agree with Counsel absolutely. It’s not for nothing that non-Christians as well as Christians are embarrassed, if not nauseated, by such outbursts as the Ashtavakra Samhita’s ‘Wonderful am I! Adoration to Myself!’ Nearly all Vedantists substitute ‘That art thou’ for ‘This am I’. Godhood is claimed for another; and for oneself indirectly, via that other. With good reason. Pride and self conceit would be as inexcusable in the Creator as they are inevitable in the creature. He’s no Muhammad Ali, beating his breast and crying ‘I’m the greatest!’ Instead of preening and puffing Himself up, God bends and bows to Himself; and in so doing bends and bows to each and all. He gives place to and underpins the lowliest. He’s a Not-God, not Himself till He’s a total stranger to Himself. Let me sound a very personal note here. The secret consolation and safety-belt of my whole adult life hasn’t been the self-centred ‘I am God’, or even ‘I am Him’, but the wholly other-centred ‘To be saved is to be Him’. Oh, yes, the glory is there, the cold white light of the Subject is real, but it is shaded and softened and warmed by surrender to and love of the Adorable Object. The One that is Light in the highest is Love in the depths.

  Put it another way. Unlike HE IS, I AM is devoid of wonder and worship, neither of which God is short of. His keenest delight is the hyper-miracle of His own Self-origination, His ‘impossible’ popping up from the blank Inane, in spite of the fact that by rights there should be nothing whatever. As Plotinus puts it, ‘He has given Himself existence’ (what a gift!); ‘He has acted Himself into being’ (what a performance!). He finds being His own Mum and Dad astoundingly funny, in both senses of the word. My point is that this surprise and admiration arise from His enjoyment of Himself as Object and not Subject. And when I share in the divine astonishment (and by God I do!) I must share also in the divine humility and objectivity which alone make it possible. Creatures thrive on their divine pretensions, their thrust towards Godhood. God alone is not a bit pushy. The only way to enjoy Him - enjoy being Him - is not, not, not to be Him! Can Sir Gerald hear me?

  These built-in contradictions are lost on the Prosecution, which as always is a simplistic, dopey, half baked, yes-or-no affair. The Defence, however, is forced by the facts to keep saying yes and no. Thus on the one hand I’m confessing to the Jury that as Jack I’m too stuck-up, too stuck with Jack, too determined to hit the jackpot, too intent on transmogrifying that jackanapes into some kind of godling, too possessed to be anything but that Godless jackanapes. And on the other hand I’m telling them that only as the God who is not-God am I come to be low and empty and owned enough to take on the splendour and the amazement that is God.

  ‘My Me is God’ is the Christing of this outward-facing First Person. ‘My God is Me’ is the anti-christing of that inward-facing third person called Jack. I have to go for one or the other, there being no halfway house.

  I go for the former. My Me is God, but my God isn’t Me. It’s as subtle and as sharp - and, in practice, as simple - as that.

  And so, members of the Jury, we come to the final Act of the drama we have all been cast in here, the Act in which you star. To you is granted the power, just this once in your lives, to kill or to spare one of your kind. If, exercising this power, you send me to the scaffold because you suppose me guilty of blasphemy, you will be guilty of murder. Why? Why, because my life has been devoted to denouncing and frustrating Jack’s pretensions to any kind of divinity; devoted to putting and keeping him in his place out there, and leaving his King enthroned here at the Centre of all things.

  Bring in a verdict of Not Guilty and you will do justice to me and to yourselves. You will leave this court with hands unstained with blood, and will at least have started to address the great problem of blasphemy - your own blasphemy.

  There’s justice and good sense in you. Let them out!

  And let me out. I could do with a breath of fresh air!’

  Your Honour, that concludes my Defence.

  Judge’s Directions to the Jury

  Members of the Jury, let me introduce my advice to you by explaining what my duties are as Judge at this stage of the Trial. Broadly, they are two. The first is to ensure that you are aware of what the law says, at least sufficiently aware for you to decide whether it has been broken. The second is to distinguish, from among the issues that will determine your decision, those concerning which there’s no reasonable doubt and those which are open to question. It’s the latter, of course, which you are required to deliberate and to pronounce on.

  Let us then look at the provisions of this Blasphemy Act. Here, my task is fairly straightforward. It transpires that the Prosecutor for the Crown and I, and indeed the Accused himself, are quite sufficiently agreed about their interpretation and substance. Briefly recapitulating, it is this: To be guilty of blasphemy within the meaning of the Act, the Accused must have done three things. (1) He must have so outraged the feelings of religious people that they have been driven to commit serious breaches of the peace. (2) He must have done so deliberately, in a way that could have been avoided, and not accidentally or incidentally. (3) He must have brought into contempt One who is held to be sacred - by grossly insulting or by falsely claiming to be that One.

  Let us look, in a little more detail, at these three criteria of guilt.

  (1) Outrage. The Accused doesn’t challenge the Prosecution’s contention that he has offended people’s susceptibilities over a long period, and to such an extent that they have frequently taken the law into their own hands. He admits to having been the cause of very serious social unrest. If any doubts remain on this score, the testimony of a number of Witnesses confirms these facts. In short, there’s no issue here for you to consider.

  (2) Deliberate Outrage. When the alleged offence isn’t aimed at his religious opponents, but arises incidentally or accidentally out of the Accused’s convictions, it doesn’t amount to blasphemy as defined in the Act. Here we do have a question for you to consider: Has Mr John a-Nokes been fortifying and defending his own religious position with unnecessary vigour and persistence? Well, you have had almost a month’s experience of his behaviour in all manner of encounters with people, together with their testimony about him. Does he strike you as an unreasonably dogmatic propagandist, happy to be fired by a vision which infuriates many people, terrifies others, and both infuriates and terrifies yet others? Is he devoid of compassion and social concern, interested only in self-aggrandizement? These are matters for you to decide, on the evidence. If you are at all doubtful about the answer, you must acquit him.

  (3) Contempt for a specific Entity. To be guilty of blasphemy under the Act the Accused has to ridicule or slander or otherwise bring into contempt a Being or Person or Object that is regarded as sacred by a sizeable section of the community. One way of doing this - and you could say that it’s John a-Nokes’s speciality - is claiming that he is such a Being. Understandably enough, it is this setting himself up to be the very One they worship, with awe and from afar, which (to judge from the Witnesses we have heard) has proved incomparably more offensive than any co
ntempt he might have shown for their prophets or saints, or for their sacred books, objects, symbols or practices. There’s no reasonable doubt that it is his autodeification or godmanship (I can neither find nor coin a term which is neutral, and doesn’t distort or misrepresent his position) that has sparked off practically all of the violence against him and his friends, and the clamour for his execution. No big surprise this: I need hardly remind you of historical precedents.

  Now we come to the big question for you to consider and pronounce upon. Is the Accused’s claim - his oft-repeated assertion that he is indeed the One he says he is - true or false? He says that your answer will depend on whether you have conscientiously carried out the tests he again and again asked you to do.

  My own observation is that the majority did not do so. Even now it isn’t too late to correct this very serious omission. You have only - I’m quoting Mr John a-Nokes - to reverse your attention and look in at what you are now looking out of. Only do that, and (he says) you will see Who you are, and Who he is as well.

  As I say, the main question is whether the Accused is Who he claims to be.

  If he is that One, then whatever offence his claim gives rise to is quite irrelevant. He has all the right in the world to upset the world. And you must bring in a verdict of Not Guilty.

  If he hasn’t made good his claim, if you decide that he isn’t that One, why then the offence he gives people at once becomes the crucial issue. I put it to you that the offence - the degree to which he outrages the susceptibilities of religious people - is very serious indeed. But is it intentional? Is the Accused deliberately provocative? If so, you must bring in a verdict of Guilty. If you aren’t sure, you must bring in a verdict of Not Guilty.

  Go now, elect your Foreperson, and consider your verdict.

  The court rises. I’m taken back to my cell.